Sunday, January 6, 2013

A new year, a new blog...

So, blogging is a new thing for me. It's something I've toyed with
before but never actually done. I know I have things to say, but I can
never seem to find what it is I want to talk about. I've entertained the
idea of blogs on cooking, comics, gaming, general nerdiness, and a few other
ideas but nothing has ever gotten off of the ground.

I am a big fan of gaming. Gaming of all types, really, but my
favorite genre is roleplaying games. I like to create worlds and
characters, tell stories with them, and occasionally put pencil to paper (or
stylus to Cintiq) and create images that go along with them. My favorite
roleplaying system, without a doubt, is Fate by the amazing folks over at Evil Hat.

My
love affair began in 2007. Soon
after my family’s moved to Texas I walked into the local gaming store (friendly
and/or professional were suspect in this case) looking for something new to
read. Browsing the gaming shelves
I found a 6x9 tome with yellow letters along the spine very much in the style
of the Raiders of the Lost Ark font that read, Spirit
of the Century. Pulp heroes in
an extremely narrative, very collaborative, RPG? I was in from the word go. I picked up the book that day and read it cover to cover and
was immediately hooked.

Since
that faithful day I have purchased and read every iteration of the Fate rules
that I could get my hands on. From Strands
to Kerberos
Club and Dresden
to Diaspora,
I have read (I think) them all. In
fact, whenever
I pick up another RPG or start the process for planning a new campaign, I
almost always start thinking about how I can do it with FATE and I almost
always come up with something.

In August 2012 Mike Olsen from the AMAZING Spirit of the [Blank] blog and
contributor to many an fantastic Fate titles announced he would be publicly
playtesting the Atomic Robo
Role Playing Game (AARPG). I
signed up immediately and was able to get in on round two, which was really
exciting. One of my favorite
comics (seriously, check it out if you
haven’t) mixed with my favorite RPG (going through a revision), written by my Fate hero…I simply couldn’t pass it
up. I don’t get a lot of gaming
time in, but I was lucky to run a few sessions and it was great. The players had fun, I had fun, I
couldn’t wait for more…and I didn’t have to wait long.

In November 2012 Fred Hicks announced the impending
Kickstarter for the newest version of the rules, Fate Core. The Kickstarter
launched on December 3rd and I achieved minimum funding it was
seemed like 45 minutes. The Yahoo! group went super
nova and Google+
got a community dedicated to the game.

So, I decided to start a Fate blog. Yeah, I know, it’s not the first but
there’s always room for one more.
I have a few plans for this thing.
I am going to use it as a place to discuss my plans for a couple of
campaigns I want to run, I want to do setting and character conversions, I plan
on doing reviews of products (past and present), and work on converting older
Fate stuff into Core. The plan is
weekly posts, but I’d like to do more and dedicate specific days to specific
topics. If there’s something you’d
like to see, let me know.

So, please bear with me as I get this thing up and
running. I am working on a format
and some graphics for the page and updates will come soon.